Clouds

by Aristophanes

THE LITERARY WORK

A Creek play set in Athens in the early fifth century bce; first performed In 423 bce but surviving only in the revised version of 418-416 bce

SYNOPSIS

The somewhat bawdy political satire demonstrates the dangers that Socratic philosophy poses to Athens,

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

The Play in Focus

For More Information

Not much is known about the personal life of the poet Aristophanes, whose comic genius is undisputed. The dates of his birth (c. 446 bce) and death (c. 386 bce) are estimates. We do know that Aristophanes was educated at Athens, of which he was a loyal, if consistently critical, citizen. Of the 44 plays ascribed to him, 11 survive. These 11 testify to Aristophanes’ talent for biting public satire. In addition to Clouds, which lambastes the philosopher Socrates and his followers, Aristophanes’ other works are all ruthlessly critical of various aspects of Athenian society and public policy: The so-called “peace-plays” (Acharnians, Peace, and Ly-sistrata) attack Athens’ seemingly endless war with Sparta. Aristophanes criticizes the corrupt and overused legal system of Athens in Wasps; he condemns the “new” poetry of Euripides in Frogs. And lest we think that Socrates was the only well-known public person to figure so prominently in Aristophanes’ works, another surviving play (Knights) criticizes and even ridicules the Athenian ruler Cleon. In fact, so fierce was Aristophanes’ criticism that Cleon brought a lawsuit against the poet, charging him with slander and treason.

The comedy of Aristophanes’ day typically transgressed acceptable behavior. Still, the coarse, vulgar, and even obscene nature of Aristophanes’ comedies has led to a great deal of speculation about his traits. A few have assumed that the poet-playwright himself must have been fairly crude and somewhat of a buffoon, while others have pointed out the need to distinguish between his morals and manners and those of his characters. With so little information to go on, scholars have been unable to settle the debate about what kind of man Aristophanes was. Most, however, describe him as a man who was conservative, romantic, and even reactionary. Plato’s dialogue the Symposium depicts Aristophanes as circulating in the highest levels of society, a portrayal that many consider fairly accurate. Though his comedies are bawdy and ribald, like the others of his age, the poet had high expectations for his comedies and what they could accomplish. In all his plays, his harsh criticism of the modern approach to values, morals, art, public policy, and ways of viewing the world demonstrates an unequivocal longing for Athens’ “good old days” and a desire to uphold the religious and social conventions of tradition. Aristophanes is said to be the first literary critic, and he judged poetry based on what he thought was its primary function—to make us better human beings. His Clouds aims to save Athens from the “danger” of developments in Greek philosophy.

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

Determining who the real Socrates is

There is no doubt that the character of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds was inspired by the historical Socrates (469-399 bce), the famous philosopher who was tried, found guilty. and sentenced to death by the city of Athens in 399 bce, 24 years after the performance of Aristophanes’ play. Since Socrates did not produce any written documents, we must glean much of what we know of him from the writings of others, especially his student Plato. Plato believed that Clouds was in no small measure responsible for Socrates’ conviction. Although Plato’s Apology reads like a transcript of the trial and seems to have been written fairly soon after Socrates’ death, scholars disagree about how much of the dialogue records actual events and how much artistic license was taken. Another friend of Socrates, Xenophon, wrote his own Apology, and its account of the trial differs. In any case, Plato’s Apology condemns the way that Aristophanes portrayed Socrates as irresponsible and characterizes him very differently than Clouds.

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates begins his defense to the jury by outlining the charges against him. He divides his accusers into two groups, the “old” and the “new.” The new accusers are the men who have charged him with the specific, “official” offenses for which he is on trial: not believing in the city’s gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. But the old accusers, according to Socrates, are far more dangerous; they have been slandering him and turning public opinion against him for years. Socrates refers to a “certain comic poet,” to whom members of the jury listened when they “were most trusting, when some of you were children and youths” (Plato, Apology, 18d). Socrates laments that this comic poet (Aristophanes) had more than 20 years to malign him, while Socrates had only one day to change their minds. He summarizes the charges leveled against him:

“Socrates does injustice [commits a crime], and is meddlesome, by investigating things under the earth and the heavenly things, and by making the weaker speech the stronger, and by teaching others these same things.” It is something like this. For you yourselves also used to see these things in the comedy of Aristophanes: a certain Socrates was carried around there, claiming that he was treading on air and spouting much other drivel.

(Apology, 19c)

In response, Socrates simply states “None of these things is so” (Apology, 19e). He asks if any jury member has ever heard him conversing about these topics, and if so, to come forward. None can, he adds, because he never discussed the things Aristophanes has accused him of, and the same holds true for the rest of Aristophanes’ rumors about him.

Based on what we know of Socrates from Plato and other sources, Aristophanes’ portrayal is not entirely accurate. First, Plato’s Socrates is not concerned with the physical sciences and investigations into material causes, although he admits in another dialogue by Plato (Phaedo) that he pursued such inquiries as a youth. Second, Plato’s Socrates never taught or purported to teach anyone how to “make the weaker speech the stronger.” Moreover, he, in contrast to the sophists, did not place high value on wealth. He did refute prominent men in public discussions, often making them look ridiculous in the process. He admits too that some of his followers learned to speak cleverly by his example. And he is indeed revolutionary in pushing for a new understanding of the virtues, which is no longer founded on the traditional myths about the Greek gods. However, Plato’s Socrates also champions justice and virtue, while Aristophanes’ Socrates in Clouds is a pompous charlatan who undermines traditional morals and values, such as piety and a son’s obedience to his father.

Would Aristophanes have been aware of these differences between his portrayal of Socrates and the actual man? Perhaps he was, but took artistic license with his subject. Aristophanes might have concluded that Socrates would make a useful scapegoat and prime example of all that was wrong with the sophists and philosophers. According to the Apology, Aristophanes’ play did great damage to Socrates’ case. There are scholars, however, who counter that “the power of Aristophanic satire to influence political events is grossly overestimated” and “no firm evidence can connect the philosopher’s condemnation and the comic poet’s caricature” (Segal, p. 45). According to this view, Socrates merely provided great material for comic inspiration. Not only was he well known in Athens as an eccentric who went around barefoot questioning people, but, as already noted, his unusual physical characteristics (such as his odd gait) made him ideal for comic caricature.

The conservative poet and a city in flux

When Aristophanes wrote his plays, Athens was undergoing a dramatic transformation. Advances were being made in art, architecture, music, literature, science, and philosophy, and these advances posed serious challenges to established religious tradition and its associated morality and ethics. Militarily, Athens took an ever more aggressive stance, pursuing a policy of expansion and internationalism that brought a flood of merchants, traders, and soldiers to the city, all foreigners who introduced the Athenians to new beliefs, value systems, and worldviews. Tributes from a growing empire and the discovery of silver deposits outside Athens, at Laurion, further enriched the city. In keeping with these developments, the pursuit and accumulation of wealth became a central concern for an increasing number of people. These are all changes that Aristophanes perceived as threats to the old, established order in Athenian society and that he criticized in his works.

In such an atmosphere, it is easy to see why Aristophanes would have viewed Socrates and his philosophy as a serious threat to Athenian society. Socrates did not believe in accepting conventional wisdom or public opinion on any given subject. His whole method of philosophy was one based on questioning. As practiced by Socrates, philosophy consisted of verbal exchanges, wherein an important query such as “What is the nature of justice?” was discussed with conversation partners or interlocutors in a series of question-and-answer sessions. In the Apology, Socrates claims that of all the Athenians he has questioned, the politicians and the poets have been the most ignorant. Not only do they know nothing about justice or politics or the gods; they pretend that they do! Socrates reasoned that he was more knowledgeable than the Athenians he questioned: “I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do” (Apology, 21d). For Socrates, wisdom amounted to recognizing one’s ignorance. This realization marked the beginning of the quest for the truth, which required one to question and even to blatantly disregard established opinions and myths. No doubt the spirit of rebellion in this approach alarmed Aristophanes, a poet who has been characterized as “The great reactionary who opposes with all the means at his disposal all the new-fangled things, be it the democracy, the Euripidean tragedy, or the pursuits of Socrates” (Strauss, Rebirth, p. 103).

The sophists

Traveling scholars and intellectuals known as sophists (derived from the Greek term for “wisdom”) traveled the Greek world, lecturing and teaching for a fee mathematics, history, natural philosophy, rhetoric, and more. Too diverse in their interests and approaches to be considered a unified movement, sophists elicited both positive and negative reactions from the cities they frequented. Several sophists were highly regarded, and many had successful careers. The Athenian statesman Pericles took pride in his friendships with the sophists Damon and Anaxagoras, both active during the fifth century bce; also he invited another well-known sophist, Protagoras of Abdera (c. 481-420 bce), to Athens.

Other Athenians considered sophists a disruptive and possibly dangerous element in society, mainly because of their argumentative skills, which could be used to undermine or at least call into question the validity of traditional religion, morality, and government. Many also feared the sophists’ possible influence on the aristocratic youth of fifth-century Athens. Three of Socrates’ former disciples—Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides—became involved in anti-democratic activities, colluding with Sparta, Athens’ enemy in the Peloponnesian War, and initiating a coup known as the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. When democracy was restored in Athens, Socrates him-self fell under suspicion.

Those hostile to the sophists, like Plato, tended to depict them mainly as clever rhetoricians, convincing speakers who used the art of persuasion to win any argument, without any regard for right and wrong. Indeed, the modern term “sophistry” is often applied to clever, specious arguments.

Probably the public at large found it hard to distinguish between the kind of arguments the sophists were famous for and what Socrates referred to as his questioning of Athenian citizens in pursuit of the truth. At the time, there was no clear-cut distinction between the two types of discussions, so Socrates tended to be tarred with the same brush as the sophists. If Aristophanes shared the prejudices of his fellow Athenians, he might have truly believed Socrates to be a sophist and thus have focused on all that the philosopher had in common with that disreputable group: intellectual pretension, an outlook that embraced moral relativism rather than strict morality, and a skepticism that made people question basic values, like belief in the gods and obedience to the laws.

The Play in Focus

Plot summary

Aristophanes’ Clouds uses its main character to present Socrates and his philosophy as a corrupting and dangerous influence on Athens. Strepsiades, the main character, is a simple, traditional farmer from the countryside who has married unwisely, relates poorly with his son, and is struggling with huge debts because of his family’s extravagance. His wife, a “classy, luxurious, aristocratic” townswoman, has very expensive tastes (Aristophanes, Clouds, line 48). He blames her not only for spending so freely but also for spoiling their son, Phidippides, whose costly habits she encourages. The son dabbles in horses and gambling, indulging his taste for racing with an abandon that has thrown his father into debt. After a night of fretting, Strepsiades comes up with a plan: he decides that he and his son will attend Socrates’ school, which is known as the thinkery, to learn how to make the “weaker speech the stronger” and thus convince his creditors to forgive his debts.

At the thinkery, a student of Socrates recounts the brilliant investigations conducted by his teacher that very day. Socrates figured out how many of its own feet, or how far, a flea could leap when it jumped from person to person by making wax slippers for the flea and measuring them. Also he sought to discover whether “gnats hum through their mouth or through their be-hind” by examining the intestines of a gnat, after which he declared that the “gnats’ anus is a trumpet!” (Clouds, lines 158-159). When Strepsiades wonders why a group of young men are bent over with their own anuses looking at heaven, the student replies that their anuses are learning astronomy. As if these descriptions of Socrates and his pursuits were not derogatory enough, the student makes it known that Socrates, while “gaping upwards” as he investigated “the courses and revolutions of the moon” was “crapped on” by a lizard from the roof (Clouds, lines 193, 171-173).

Not only does Aristophanes portray Socratic investigations as useless and ludicrous in the extreme, but also as distracting Socrates and his students to such an extent that they forget even their most basic needs. The student tells Strepsiades that Socrates was so engrossed in his studies the previous evening that he forgot to prepare or get them dinner, so they all went hungry. In much the same way, philosophy seems to have distracted Socrates and his students from Athenian politics; the student has no idea what Strepsiades is talking about when he refers to the Peloponnesian War. Philosophy, as Aristophanes depicts it, is concerned only with scientific knowledge and universal definitions and concepts. It posits a Socrates who seeks a philosophic detachment from the affairs and concerns of the city. In fact, when the play first introduces Socrates, he is physically detached from the city. He comes into view suspended in a basket in the air, attempting to emulate the free and formless clouds, which he chooses to worship instead of the traditional gods. For Aristophanes’ Socrates, “Zeus does not even exist … the true gods are the Clouds” (West in Aristophanes, p. 29).

Aristophanes makes his attack on philosophy even more explicit in the subsequent scene. When Phidippides, the son, decides to enter the thinkery, the characters representing Just Speech (an old man) and Unjust Speech (a young man) have a contest to determine which will have the privilege of educating him. Just Speech blames Unjust Speech for the current corruption of the city’s youth, who no longer have respect for their parents, the gods, or the city and its laws. Moderation and restraint are the behaviors to practice, says Just Speech. In the good old days, when Just Speech was the norm, the youth were silent, respected their elders, and became courageous and strong through gymnastics and athletics. Un-just Speech counters with arguments of its own. It warns the young man of all the pleasures he will have to give up in the name of moderation: lovers, drinking, gambling, delicacies. If he acquires Unjust Speech, he will be able to act however he wants. Next, Unjust Speech points out contradictions in the various elements of religious traditions. It ends its “pitch” with a flourish, pointing to the audience and stating that even the leading men of Athens, its orators, lawyers, and poets, no longer live by the beliefs that Just Speech espouses. Not knowing how to respond, Just Speech concedes defeat.

The next time we see Phidippides, he has re-turned home from the thinkery after completing his study of the unjust speech. He instructs his father in what arguments to make to his creditors in order to avoid paying his debts. Strepsiades manages to use these rhetorical tricks successfully, which makes him deliriously happy until he gets into an argument with his son. The next scene finds him running from the house and hurling names at his son, calling him a wretch and a father beater. Apparently Phidippides physically assaulted his father during an argument, and when Strepsiades told him to stop, the son re-fused, claiming he could use his argumentative powers to persuade his father that parent-beating is just.

At this point, Strepsiades realizes the consequences of what he has done and the full ramifications of life in a society that throws off its laws and traditions. Distraught, he asks the god Hermes what to do and is told to burn down Socrates’ thinkery. Fire is the only way to destroy it; lawsuits or other civil remedies will not do

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

The war between Athens and Sparta from 431 to 404 bce was the most important and possibly the most troubling aspect of Athenian policy during Aristophanes’ lifetime. During the war, Sparta besieged Athens, forcing its citizens to remain within the city’s defensive walls, which the Spartans could not breach. The plague that resulted from those crowded, unhealthy conditions claimed about a quarter of the Athenian population, including the leading statesman Pericles. Aristophanes criticized the war and its political supporters in no fewer than three plays, the most famous of which is Lysistrata (41 1 bce), a hilarious comedy wherein the women of Athens con-spire to end the war by withholding sex from their husbands (also in Classical Literature and Its Times). In Clouds, the main character, Strepsiades, often refers to this war, most humorously when he asks one of Socrates’ students to move Sparta farther away from Athens on the map they are studying.

because the philosophers can simply talk their way out of them. Heeding the advice, Strepsiades sets the edifice ablaze to rid society of the disease of unjust speech.

Aristophanes’ true targets

While Aristophanes’ play makes Socrates the butt of the satire, it in fact attacks pretentious intellectuals in general for their impact on daily life in Athens. Using Socrates as a representative appears to have been a practical choice, since most of the other intellectuals were foreign migrants to Athens and so less familiar to the Athenian public. Also Socrates was someone with physical characteristics—a snub nose, large eyes, and an odd gait—on which a comedy could capitalize. Moreover, he was known for his habit of drawing people into conversations in public. Besides employing these character traits, Aristophanes assigned to Socrates “all the intellectual theories and activities which he wished to ridicule”; that some of them did not really apply to Socrates mattered little to him (MacDowell, p. 132).

Aristophanes’ reasons for making Socrates his comic scapegoat apparently stem from a harmful legal development in the city, for which the playwright blamed the intellectuals. Many Athenians were bringing weak cases before the courts and setting out to win nonetheless. By Aristophanes’ day, it had become possible for the side with the weaker evidence to prevail if the evidence was presented cleverly enough. Plato’s student Aristotle described such a scene, using the example of a man accused of assault: a physically weak man charged with assault might argue that his weakness made him an unlikely culprit; charged with the same crime, a strong man could argue that he would not have committed it be-cause others would immediately suspect him on account of his strength. Aristotle notes that both arguments appear probable, but the strong man’s argument only seems to make sense because of the way it is presented: “[T]his is what making the worse argument the better is” (Aristotle in MacDowell, p. 128).

Such attempts at legal wrangling were attributed, with some justification, to the teachings of the sophists. Protagoras, perhaps the first man

OLD COMEDY, MIDDLE COMEDY, NEW COMEDY

Toward the end of Aristophanes’ career, Old Comedy fell into a serious decline. Aristophanes’ last plays, particularly plutus (388 bce), heralded the beginning of “Middle Comedy,” in which the chorus was less involved with the actors (as was already in the case in tragedy) and the satire targeted political figures less often. In the fourth century bce, the poet Menander completed the transformation of the genre into “New Comedy,” wherein luck and fortune provide plenty of surprises and plottwists. Cone were the biting satire and scathing criticism of Aristophanes; Menander replaced them with more subtle observations about people and human nature in what can best be described as comedies of manners. Significantly, Menander’s career covered a period in which democratic rule was replaced by an oligarchy in Athens. The more biting or critically laced comedy would reappear once the democracy was restored.

to identify himself as a professional sophist, be-came most widely associated with the claim that he could teach people “how to make the worse argument the better” (MacDowell, pp. 128-129). He was also credited with the authorship of a treatise on argumentative techniques. However, Protagoras was not universally condemned as a malign influence. He also taught the art of citizenship, arguing that, whatever sorts of things seem just and honorable to a given city are in-deed that way as long as the city deems them so. Others of the age condemned Protagoras for not drawing an absolute distinction between truth and falsehood, or right and wrong. While Protagoras employed persuasion to a higher purpose, hoping to develop good citizens, his followers—who arrived in Athens during the 420s—perfected the art of persuasion for its own sake. Several used it to excuse terrible crimes, arguing, for example, that if a king wins power (the end), it justifies his having killed or banished others (the means) to attain it.

Sources and literary context

Although Clouds does not name real individuals, it “contains more or less clear allusions to theories and activities which we can attribute to Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diogenes, and Antiphon,” among others (MacDowell, p. 130). The poetic comedy furthermore reflects a very real competition between poetry and the fledgling field of “philosophy” (not yet known by that name when Clouds was written). The poets of fifth-century Athens vied with the newer intellectuals for the position of supreme dispensers of wisdom in society. Aristophanes manipulates it so that poetry, in the form of his play, emerges the victor.

Aristophanes’ plays are among the earliest surviving comedies in Western civilization; we only have descriptions or fragments of earlier come-dies. The particular comedic style of fifth-century Athens is referred to as “Attic Comedy” or some-times as “Old Comedy.” The Greek komoidia, from which “comedy” derives, refers to a song, often sung by a group of costumed men who would entertain audiences at festivals or other public events. Not much is known regarding the trans-formation of komoidia into comic plays, but apparently Old Comedy preserved the antagonistic relationships between characters (or between a character and the chorus), as well as the biting social and political critiques of the costumed men. The plays of Old Comedy seem to have revolved around issues of the day. In the fifth century bce, comic plays were directly political in a way that tragedy was not; their jokes had a bite and were often meant to be taken very seriously. Although the comedies generally featured a fantastic plot, they were “part of a real democracy” (Boardman, et al, p. 168). They commonly ridiculed key figures in society or portrayed them as villains, and also showed irreverence for myths and other sacred beliefs. The chorus, made up of 24 members, figured prominently in Old Comedy, playing a dramatic role and at times speaking directly to the audience for the poet.

Along with its cutting edge, Old Comedy had some standard lyrical and humorous elements. It contained beautiful melodies and meters as well as base verses that referred to bodily functions, such as vomiting or evacuating one’s bowels. Costuming and staging contributed to the comic effect. It is not only “the chamber pot [toilet] that is so omnipresent,” in the comedies but the phallus as well, notes one scholar (Segal, p. 36). In Old Comedy all the actors, even those portraying gods, wore costumes featuring a dangling phallus, which could be manipulated by a string to indicate sexual excitement.

Performance and impact

Aristophanes’ come-dies and those of his peers were performed at festivals for Dionysus, god of wine and merrymaking. These festivals, each of which lasted several days, were state holidays. They were held twice a year, in spring and winter, and they included religious rites such as prayer and an animal sacrifice. In Aristophanes’ age, Athens went to great effort to finance lavish performances of plays at the festivals. Men wealthy enough to finance a dramatic production were required by law to do so at least once in their lives. Athens’ theater could hold around 17,000 spectators—perhaps half the citizenry. Among the festival events were various processions and musical competitions, but most important was the staging of tragic and comic plays. Normally three tragedy writers would compete in a festival, each of them producing several plays, and five comic poets would compete, each with a single play.

Unfortunately for Aristophanes, Clouds did not do as well as he hoped, placing third (last) in the Great Dionysia festival, a fact that the Chorus laments in the later, revised version of the play that survives. We have no explanation of why the judges relegated the play to third place, but Socrates had recently behaved bravely on Athens’ behalf in the real-life Battle of Delion, so it may have been the wrong time for a play that ridiculed him, although there were other plays that did (Dover, p. 119). Sorely disappointed, Aristophanes, who regarded Clouds as his finest work, began to revise the play in hopes of being given another chance to present it at a festival. This hope probably never materialized, since plays were seldom performed twice. Most scholars agree that the version that has come down to us is a partially revised second draft.

Along with the rest of Aristophanes’ surviving plays, Clouds is still regularly performed, some-times with modern touches. A production by the Ancient Comic Opera Company in Toronto, for example, set Aristophanes’ lyrics to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, Wagner, and Mozart. The production also characterized Phidippides in a way that included impersonations of popular screen stars (Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, and William Shatner), and it referred to the television game show Jeopardy. Such adaptations testify to the continuing popularity of the playwright and his works.

—Despina Korovessis

For More Information

Aristophanes. Aristophanes’ Clouds. In Four Texts on Socrates. Trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Boardman, John, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray, eds. The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Dover, K. J. Aristophanic Comedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

Grant, Michael. The Classical Greeks. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989.

MacDowell, Douglas M. Aristophanes and Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Nichols, Mary P. Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate. New York: State University of New York Press, 1987.

Plato. Apology. In Four Texts on Socrates. Trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Segal, Erich. The Death of Comedy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Strauss, Leo. The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

_____.Socrates and Aristophanes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.